Winter of Discontent

Share via

A powerful, unflinching, if sometimes oblique, snapshot of a period when protest was met with brutality and torture

It is a testament to how eventful Egypt’s recent history has been that Winter
of Discontent, which is set against the backdrop of the protests in
Cairo’s Tahrir Square beginning in January 2011, already feels slightly
dated. The story has moved on since then, and not, you suspect, entirely
happily for many of the real-life protesters who are captured in documentary
footage that is incorporated into this fiction film. Even so, this is a
powerful, unflinching, if sometimes oblique, snapshot of a period in history
when protest was met with brutality and torture. Ibrahim El-Batout, 15,